Seaman’s journey from journalist to patient and back, allowing her to expose the institution's barbaric practices, was a harrowing one. “I wasn't really familiar [with Nellie] at all and hadn't really heard of her,” Ricci admitted when MediaVillage spoke with her exclusively about the project. “The research I did included reading what she wrote along with reading as much as I could about [Seaman herself]. I thought it was really important for this performance to really understand the society she came from because clearly, the way she behaved and conducted herself made her a target at the asylum.
“Initially I thought this is a person who was raised in comfort and privilege,” she continued. “For it to be inconceivable to a person that a place could be this terrible means they were never really exposed to anything that bad in their life. For any person [to willingly] put herself in this situation means she had no concept of what true danger is. I really thought that was informative. The fact there was no real plan to get her out speaks to the fact that there was a real disconnect between what was going on in the upper class versus the lower class. Not having an exit strategy really goes to show you the world she came from.”
As Bly, Ricci endures some harrowing experiences while institutionalized, but thanks to her years in front of the camera she never let them get to her. “I learned a long time ago by virtue of some of the mistakes I made not to immerse myself in a character to an extent that is harmful,” she revealed. “I've trained my mind so I don't do it as consciously as you might think. It also comes from being a child actor, and what my brain has to do in order to protect me. I literally take off the wardrobe and when they call ‘cut’ I'm a different person. I don't really maintain any of that stuff. It's impressive that people can immerse themselves in a character, but my brain just won't let me do it. I have a brain that fights for mental health.”